The field of tissue engineering combines bioengineering methods with the principles of life sciences to understand the structural and functional relationships in normal and pathological mammalian tissues. The goal of tissue engineering is the development and ultimate application of biological substitutes to restore, maintain, or improve tissue functions. Thus, through tissue engineering, it is possible to design and manufacture a bioengineered tissue in a laboratory. Bioengineered tissues can include cells that are usually associated with a native mammalian or human tissues and synthetic or exogenous matrix scaffolds.
The new bioengineered tissue must be functional when grafted onto a host, and be permanently incorporated within the host's body or progressively bioremodeled by cells from the recipient host patient. Fabrication of a tissue equivalent without a support member or scaffold leads to scientific challenges in creating the new bioengineered tissue.
Most of the oral soft tissue grafting procedures are done using autologous tissue from the palate. Although this might work very well in some of the procedures, it has the disadvantage of requiring the creation of a “donor site” that can be quite painful for patients. This additional donor site also provides limited tissue, meaning that only few teeth can be treated at one time. This can result in the need for multiple surgeries or the dentist only treating the “worst teeth” even though there may be several left untreated that could also have benefited from a grafting procedure.